


tsunami

by canticle



Series: guide you home [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Gen, Growing Up, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 10:44:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19904458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canticle/pseuds/canticle
Summary: While on one half a teenager in love is so desperately in love he's willing to make it stick, on the other side there you are, coming off of the most traumatic year of your fucking life; falsely accused and sent to live in one of the busiest cities on earth with literally no support network, shunned and labeled everywhere you go, hostility and ennui from every side.It's going to make an impression.It's going to last.





	tsunami

**Author's Note:**

> some additional notes:  
> this is what i'm calling the b-side to conflagration, akira's side of the story. it's rough and choppy and chaotic because a) i wrote it as a flash fic and b) _i_ have been feeling rough and choppy and chaotic. it's been a very very very bad time for canticle lately, and if this section hadn't been as finished as it is i wouldn't have had the energy to polish and post it, but it was and i can't take the stupid monkey brain hitting my creative centers with a wrench anymore. maybe this will appease it.
> 
> there's an additional tag for briefly mentioned suicide attempt, maybe two lines or so in the section of paragraphs that starts _"you're twenty, and you're living in your tiny studio"_ and ends with _"and the worst part is, you'd welcome it"_ if that's something you need to skip.
> 
> this is just the first half of akira's story; i don't know when i'll manage the second half. it's going to be hard to write in this state of mind; happy is right out and so is the effort of recovery. but it will come, as will the rest of my multichapter stories. i'm sorry for leaving them unfinished for so long, and sorry for adding another one to the mix, but this is important to me on a visceral level.

_You’ve been here before; you’ve seen one side of this tale already, but nothing in nature only has one face. There are dualities; two sides to a coin, two sides to a story. The flame, the douse. Will you come and see?_

  


While on one half a teenager in love is so desperately in love he's willing to make it stick, on the other side there _you_ are, coming off of the most traumatic year of your fucking life; falsely accused and sent to live in one of the busiest cities on earth with literally no support network, shunned and labeled everywhere you go, hostility and ennui from every side.

It's going to make an impression.

It's going to last.

And even when you do find friends eventually, outcasts just like yourself, ones who bond to you just as fiercely as you want to bond with them— even then you're always holding back, because _what if?_

And you work for something bigger and better than yourself, and it crumbles in your fucking hands.

All the good that you've done turns against you, even as you struggle to take it back. 

You can't even think too much about that quiet, small room, the sound of your breathing echoing through the walls.

You can't think of anything else, in the months that follow before you're set free again.

( _but you'll never really be free, will you?_ )

Even going back home, kissing the love of your life goodbye, hugging all your friends so hard that somewhere in the back of your mind you can imagine that pieces of them stay with you.

_(and sometimes that's all that keeps you going)_

Because back home the stares don't relent, the whispers, the looks. You're the talk of your small town and you're going to be the talk of your small town until you die, because that's how the rumor mill works. You went to prison, you went to _Tokyo_ (somehow even more of a crime than jail, shunted off to civilization and then having the gall to come _back_ ) and yet here you are again.

Your parents are gone so much more than they're home; your dad just grunts when you speak to him now, your mom can barely stand to look at you, you feel, and even with Morgana still there at your side like always you have to wonder if something went fucky during that last battle, that last transition, if somehow you ended up half in one world and half in another. 

Everything feels distant and detached, and you like it like that, because it makes it easier to put all your ugly emotions away, all the loneliness and the fear that still wakes you up in the middle of the night, tidily packaged up and put somewhere where it can't bother you, where you can pretend it doesn't exist. 

_(just another kind of mask, right?)_

All you have to do is make it through one more year, and then you’ll be an adult and can do whatever the hell you want. You can leave again, go back to Tokyo, finally escape Inaba’s gravitational pull and be _free_ to be with the people you love, but for now… oh, for now. For n ow you put your head down and you do your work but to _keep_ your mind on your work you withdraw, pack more and more of yourself away into tiny little corners of your mind.

Memories of beef bowls by the dozen. Memories of long, quiet study sessions. Memories of rain on a window in a coffee-scented attic. You have to put them away, because if you keep touching them they’re going to keep hurting.

Just a year.

Just a year.

Time goes by. Is it just you or do your friends' responses seem colder? Is it harder to keep up on conversations? It's not like you have anything interesting going on here. Can't get a job when everyone knows your reputation, can't hang out with friends when everyone treats you like a social leper. You don't do anything but go to school and come home and hang out online in the middle of doing your homework, waiting for someone, _anyone._

It's lonely after a full year of as much social contact as you wanted.

It gets under your skin and itches, makes you restless and lethargic at turns, but you don't want to push, don't want to let on how much you need it, how much it brightens your day when you get an answer back. They're all busy, you know this; they have to be, studying for entrance exams and getting on with their lives.

You don't want to be needy, greedy, a burden, a bother. You don’t want to keep prodding that wound, even as fiercely as you miss them, as desperately as you crave their company. They’re _busy._ You have nothing that you can do for them, stuck all the way in this shitty little town.

So when the responses die down naturally you let them.

Even to _him._

And the guilt sears your throat because sometimes he texts so much and sometimes you're just...exhausted, even if you haven't done anything, you can't be the font of love and admiration he deserves. You can't interact with him without the garbage in your brain finding a way out, and he doesn't deserve that. Doesn’t deserve to hear the frustration that fills every square centimeter of your bones and your blood and your breath, doesn’t deserve the anger that sometimes slips out from beneath the blocks you’ve put to keep it in place.

So you just...

don't.

You leave his messages on read in a froth of guilt, and the longer you go without answering them the more guilt piles on your shoulders, but you can't, after that long, it'd just be weird, right?? To open a message three days, four days, a week, two weeks after? Even if you desperately want to?

The messages slow up and taper off eventually.

That's probably for the best.

  


You've started to backslide so much since you moved back home, long empty days at school turning into long empty nights staring sleepless at your ceiling wondering what the fuck is wrong with you. The anger withers, the frustration ebbs, and all that’s left is a slow, vast, endless gut-churning _emptiness._

The weekends are the worst. Your parents leave, for some destination or other. Morgana urges you, pleads with you, commands you to get up, but spitefully enough here's all the sleep that he pushed on you when you didn't want it coming back to bite you in the ass.

There's no reason to get up. Your bones are heavy as lead, and there’s nothing to get up for. No one else is going to be coming for you, looking for you for advice, for companionship, to help with something. You've gone from having your days full of everything, sometimes even double-booked, to days full of nothing.

So you sleep. You wake and you sleep and you eat and you study and everything gets muted, blunted, receding further away from reality and into a haze of nothingness.

You go to school and you go home and you stare at your message folder, flashing (99+) unread messages, and then you turn your phone off and shove it under your pillow, tucking those away with the rest of the memories because it's been too long, and there's no point in answering it now.

It's been too long, and you're tired.

  


Your ranking goes from where you spitefully dragged it up to the top of the class to somewhere around the middle, because what's the point? You barely bother with entrance exams, because what's the _point_? If you get in somewhere you'll go, and if you don't you'll...

Well,

you'll figure it out, won't you.

Because what's the point?

Your mother is furious at you, of course, ruining all the plans she had for you. A doctor, a lawyer, a politician, a businessman; _look at the things you could be? Why are you ruining your second chance at a good life, Akira?_

There's so many one-sided yelling matches in the kitchen, her standing over you with your latest poor test result, your father in the corner with his paper as always. There's no use yelling back, she'll just yell twice as hard. There's no use trying to defend yourself, because she won't listen, not now, not ever.

There's no use trying to tell her that something feels wrong, that this haze of utter indifference just doesn't feel right sometimes when you're clear headed enough to think about it, but what can you do?

Nothing.

There's no point.

She won't listen. She never did. Nobody in this town did. Everyone who did is thousands of kilometers away, and you've let those friendships die as naturally as they should.

So at the end of the year, you graduate.

There's no fanfare. You take your diploma and wind your way through your celebrating classmates and go home to your empty house and put it on your desk and crawl beneath the covers, Morgana curling up silently at the small of your back.

You work through the summer— finally, _finally,_ something to _do;_ small jobs, odd jobs, you've been back here a year now and some of the fuss has worn down, enough that you can make some petty cash in some out-of-the-way places.

You do a semester at a small college in Okina— something you could afford even without scholarships, something you chose to placate your mother— and you don't realize you're spiraling until you wake up screaming, your nails carving furrows in your forearms, the room swaying around you, spinning between nauseating pitch black and horrible flashes of blue and wide swaths of bright lights and loud voices and pinches at the corner of your elbows.

You bite your cheeks bloody and raw to hold everything in and you shake and you shake and you _shake_ and by the time you come out of it enough to face the world again it's four days later and everything feels tenuous and raw and fake, like it's a soap-bubble skin stretched out over something horrible and gaping, an endless toothy maw the size of a planet ready to swallow you alive if you put so much as a foot wrong.

You feel like you're drowning, caught in a tsunami you never saw coming.

Sometimes the only real thing is Morgana, his fur warm and wet from where you've cried on it, his claws sharp where they dig into the meat of your thighs, his voice strident, telling you to _get up, get up Akira, you have to do this, you have to keep going,_ but what's the fucking _point_?

You do your schoolwork and you go home and you eat and you sleep and you do it all fucking over again and for _what_? You're so lonely, so desperately fucking lonely, you feel like humanity parts around you wherever you go, and something inside of you wants them to, wants to avoid their gazes and slink around on the outskirts of things anyway so they don't look at you and see what a mess you feel like, what a mess you've become.

You drop out.

Unofficially, really; you mostly just stop going. You leave the house just long enough for your parents to go to work, sneak back in through the windows for the day until an hour or so before they return.

When your mother finds out she's furious, incandescent. She tells you to get a job, tells you to go out and pound the streets looking, tells you not to come inside no matter fucking what, that she'll change the locks if she has to, that this is for your own good, that hopefully forcing you into this situation will be what lights a fire under your ass.

It isn't.

Instead of looking for jobs, you spend your days in quiet parts of town. The library, the few days its open. Up the mountain a little, on days its not. Under a bridge, on rainy days, and you make sure to leave Morgana at home so he doesn't have to suffer with you, because it's cold and you're tired. You’re so tired. You’re so, so tired.

_Look what you've become_ , you think sometimes to yourself. Sitting like an asshole under a bridge because you couldn't get it together enough to pretend you were a functioning person, couldn't fake it until you made it.

Not two years ago you were the happiest you'd ever been in your goddamn life. You had friends, you had a purpose, you were doing things and so blissfully happy and now, well.

You still have a shoebox full of yen under your bed.

A couple hundred million yen, if you're being honest.

Just sitting there, waiting for you.

  


So you take it.

You pack some clothes, you pack Morgana, and you leave in the middle of the night.

You don't know where you're going but you know you can't do anything else for yourself where you are, and the vast lethargy that spreads beneath your skin has lit like an oil slick burning as it floats above a great dark sea. You can’t do this here anymore. You can’t. If you want to live, you need to just...discard this whole section of your life and _go._

Okina's too close. You have to go further. Farther.

You go north.

You don't know where. You don't plan anything. You eat as cheaply as you can, but make sure Morgana is fed and comfortable. He hates this, hates this plan so fucking much, but he won't leave you, even after you offer to get him back to Tokyo, to Haru or Futaba or Ann. He’s the best friend you've ever had, a friend you don't deserve, and you tell him this, and he tells you he _knows, stupid, you've always been his favorite, he knows you have it in you to get out of this mess._

The bullet train takes you almost all the way north. You pick a stop and say _here, this is where you'll start again, in a new place where nobody knows you, just like last time._

A recipe for success, right?

_(It's not.)_

The newness buoys you, your fresh start; you find a job at an electronics store stripping salvageable parts out of old cell phones and broken toasters and the like, ready to be repurposed. it's work suited to you; your fingers are still deft, even being out of practice.

You look in on your friends sometimes.

It's hard not to— Ann's face is plastered on magazine covers and subway signs, and there's big bang burgers everywhere, of course. You pass a TV once and see Yusuke, presenting some beautiful piece of art or another.

You don't look for Ryuji.

You think this year you'll be able to handle it better, but it sneaks up on you regardless— one morning you're fine, and then a car backfires in the street outside your workplace and you drop the expensive computer you're refurbishing, rendering it nothing more than scrap.

You can't stay after that.

The eyes, always the eyes, always wondering if the feds are going to come back for you— you hadn't seen any back home, but sometimes the police cars would roll past your house at night, and you'd always lie awake and wonder if they were going to stop. You haven't seen any but that doesn't mean they're not there; they can be sneaky, they can be subtle, they can be lying in wait and waiting for you.

So you leave.

Your box of yen is less full now.

You go south, and you go west, and you try again.

  


You're twenty, and you're lying in your tiny studio with every piece of clothing you own piled on top of you because the power's out, again, because you forgot to pay the bill pinned to the corkboard beside the refrigerator.

You're twenty-two, and your card gets declined at the register for insufficient funds, and you think back to the steadily-dropping stacks of yen in your shoebox with dismay.

You're twenty-four, and Morgana digs his claws into your leg, panic in his voice as you hang your head over the toilet and do your best to empty yourself, the empty pill bottle an afterthought on the floor beside you.

You've lost hours, days, weeks, months to the fog in your brain, to the crushing indifference and overwhelming fear; you've lost some of the best years of your life wandering nomadic around the northern half of Japan like you're trying to run away from something, but it's gaining on you, endlessly, silently, patiently.

The soap bubble over the hungry, gaping maw of the world wears thin,

and you think that sooner rather than later it's going to pop beneath you.

And the worst part is,

you'd welcome it.

  


You're twenty-six and you're alive.

Honestly a little surprised by that, as much as you can be surprised by anything anymore.

After that scare two years ago you've been doing your best to try and function— for Morgana's sake, not for your own, he still won't leave you and you can't vanish and leave him.

You're twenty-six and you're tired, _exhausted,_ worn down and worn out in an intangible way. Your shoebox is almost empty and you're handing over most of the rest of your cash to secure a tiny, nasty studio in the only city that's ever felt like home.

You think this might be it. Deep down inside where the lethargy lives, you think you’re done. You’re through. You’re so _tired._

Morgana knows how to navigate Tokyo; if anything happened to you, he could at least get where he needed to go, where someone could take care of him.

You're just so tired, when you can feel anything at all.

You work nights, because it's easier, because the type of person you are now prefers the type of people that come out at night; they're more understanding than the daylight people, they know what the bow of your shoulders and the bags under your eyes mean.

This particular job is at a seedy bar, but it pays in cash under the table, so you'll take it. You’ve been taking a lot of what you can get lately. It’s easier that way. The patrons are quiet for the most part, the music unobnoxious, and the tips— they're present, which is more than some places you’ve worked in the past. Enough for fresh ramen instead of instant, when you can bring yourself to eat it without your mind flashing back to the last times you ever felt happy.

Enough for ant bait, rat poison you don't have to worry about Morgana getting into; enough for blankets thick enough to keep out the physical chill, and more than enough food to keep Morgana fat and happy.

And you exist,

_(for now)_

isolated in your own little bubble, smiling and nodding where necessary like a motion-activated animatronic, like a marionette pulled on strings, until someone says your name and shatters it.

You'd recognize the voice anywhere, the one that still promises to be right beside you in your dreams sometimes. You'd recognize those eyes, the slant of those brows, the curve of that jaw.

You're wearing the same clothes for the third day and haven't cut your hair in six months and barely slept in the past two nights and Sakamoto Ryuji is sitting on the other side of your bar and you drop the shotglass you're holding,

because that soap bubble is gone and you're falling.

You would rather die than meet his eyes.

You would rather go out back and shoot yourself in the face and consign yourself to an eternity in hell than look back up at him but he says your name again and you,

_can't,_

because look at him, fucking _look_ at him, the years have been so good to him, he's so much more beautiful than you remember and you're standing here in a stained apron and yesterday's shirt and panic bubbling in your gut, adrenaline in your veins making you sick with it, making you shake, because he's seeing you, he's looking at you like nobody's looked at you in so, so long and you're a fucking _mess._

This is the worst thing that's ever happened to you, worse than the nightmares, worse than your failed suicide attempt, worse than that one hazy night in police captivity that haunts you every November.

_Ryuji_ , you say, thin and reedy, dragged out of your chest before you can help it like it’s pushed out of you by the froth of fearful agony piling higher and higher inside you.

And then you run away like the fucking coward you are and pray to every god that ever was or ever will be that he'll forget he ever saw you, that he won't tell anyone else that you were here, because you think if you have to pick up shop and move again that where you end up, you'll lay down in the sand and die there.

You get Morgana his food at the end of your shift, and shake your head when he tells you to feed yourself. You can't eat, can barely breathe yet, still wrecked inside, the casual balance you’ve had for so long shattered into uselessness.

You can't tell him what happened, either. All you can do is hope it won't again.

You've fallen out of touch with the others, have been for years; tonight's the first night in a long, long time that you actively go searching, panicked, because if you run into anyone more than Ryuji, anyone else you're not expecting, you honestly don't know what you'll do.

They all still live in Tokyo, but it looks like nowhere near where you've chosen to settle (which is definitely for the best, because even without the rats the neighborhood your apartment is in is seedy as all hell, and if you could spare more than an iota of brainpower to think about it you'd wonder what Ryuji was doing all the way over here in the first place) but you can't , because you haven't felt fear this bad, gripping your guts with icy fists and threatening to tear them right out, since last November.

You don't even know what you're afraid of, just that you're afraid, and you don't want them to see you, you never wanted anyone to see you like this, you just wanted to live out what remained of your life ( _hopefully not very much_ , that traitorous little voice in the back of your head that never leaves anymore insists) in quiet obscurity.

No one else should know. Not even Futaba, who regularly finds each of your new cheap cell phones and texts him, just so you know she knows. If you've kept up with anyone, it's with her, even if only barely; a few texts a year from her end, a picture of Morgana every now and then from yours, just enough to— what? To serve as proof of life?

She's the closest thing to family you have left, even if you wouldn't dream of saying that to her face anymore, wouldn't dream of showing up at Leblanc and talking to Sojiro after so long.

So it’ll be fine. You can avoid the rest of them. and hopefully Ryuji won't come back, hopefully he has better places to be, better things to do...but he doesn't.

_He comes back._

And each time you have to look over and see him sitting at the bar, nursing whatever he's drinking and staring out into the crowded interior of the room with that thoughtful look on your face it hits you like an axe, like you're being flayed to piece.

The sheer strength of what you feel leaves you reeling, constantly off balance; you haven't _felt_ this much in years, haven't had this much emotion, this much connection to yourself in longer than you can remember.

It terrifies you.

You shy away from it even as you crave it, want to pull back and run away even as you want to thrust your hands into the fire and hurt just to _feel_ again.

He doesn't say anything after that first time, just looks, and that's bad enough. The weight of his gaze on your shoulders makes your hands shake, your mouth dry, panic high and tight in your chest.

You wish he would go away.

You wish he would just disappear out of your life again, a beloved memory and nothing more, but he doesn't.

He comes into your work and he sits at the bar and he orders something fruity and non-alcoholic and he sits quietly until he's done and he tips well and he leaves.

And eventually you settle, your feathers still ruffled, your hackles still raised, but seeing him every night _(for fuck's sake Ryuji don't you have someone to go home to, somewhere to be)_ starts to hurt a little less, like the constant abrading is finally scabbing over.

And then he asks to talk to you.

Your everything freezes. Your heart, your words, your voice; you honestly don't know what you spit out until you review it fifteen minutes later, hiding in the bathroom with the phantom ache of nerves like acid on your tongue.

You said _yes._

_What fucking possessed you to say yes???_

There's no way you can duck out the back and just book it; he knows where to find you and you genuinely need this job.

Your nails are bitten too far down to dig into your palms like you want them to for that grounding burst of pain but you do it anyway, hard enough that you think the tips of your fingers might bruise. It's still early spring, still cold, and the wind whips through the alleyway and cuts through your thin jacket like butter.

You remember other springs, other alleys, other moments shared.

You stay well out of arm's reach— all the way on the other side of the alley, to be honest, your arms wrapped around you in defensiveness and to keep the heat in. Your conversation is...awkward, to say the least, and you keep looking for an opening, some way to vanish, some way to escape.

Something inside you wants to laugh high and tittering, thinking about the types of things you had at your disposal ten years ago to escape situations that made you feel like this. Long gone, all long gone, the boy you were is dead and you killed him and sometimes you feel like you're just piloting his corpse around until it figures out that it can rest.

You feel like you're drowning.

Eventually he lets you go.

You leave faster than you should. You all but run from him like you've been running all this time, and when you get home you scoop Morgana up into your arms and bury your face into his soft fur and let your foundation creak and settle and shudder, let some of those wobbling supports crack and crumble.

You'll build them back up in the morning but for now you're tired, and you're drowning.

He doesn't say anything to you again for a week or two, just shows up, drinks his drink, tips on the bar and leaves. But as you pass by one evening he says your name. You fumble the glass you're carrying but don't drop it this time, don't turn to face him fully but angle your body just enough.

His question gives you pause, makes you flinch in a well-worn way by now, but if you're not looking at him you can answer, like you're just speaking to the air.

And besides, it's not about you anymore, but Morgana.

If you can get him to someone, anyone, then maybe you'll get to rest sooner.

You offer to bring him tomorrow.

Ryuji agrees.

You don't tell Morgana what's happening until you're halfway there, and you're grateful the street is empty when you do, because his screech is loud enough to ring across the empty walls.

_Why didn't you say anything before now?_ he demands, bright and active and loud in your ear, _how long has this been going on, Akira—_

_It hasn't,_ you say, because it really, really hasn't. What Ryuji chooses to do with his evenings has nothing to do with you. _He asked for you. I figured you'd might want to get out and around for a while._

Morgana goes quiet, his paws a reassuringly familiar weight on your shoulder. _It has been a while since we were able to walk around like we used to, hasn't it?_ he says thoughtfully.

_I'm not going,_ you hastily say. _Just you and Ryuji_.

And that sets him off enough that he's still grumping when you hand him over, Ryuji's bright smile like an icepick to the chest. _You'd best be here to pick me up when you're done!_ Morgana says insistently, like he— suspects, like he knows about the loud little voice in the back of your head (and of course he does, he was there last time, and as much as you'd like to argue that he should stay with Ryuji, here and now is not the time or the place.) So you nod, and you agree, and you watch your best friend walk away with the man who was once the love of your life, your inseparable right hand.

If you'd had the night off, even though you promised, you might have done something regrettable, but you don't, and losing yourself in the workflow is easier than ever without Ryuji's constant presence at the end of the bar.

He shows back up half an hour before your shift ends with a takeaway container that you staunchly ignore the existence of, leaving it in his hand as you take the bag with a full, sleepy Mona in it and all but flee.

Morgana asks for your phone last night, navigates the cracked screen with deft paws; you watch him send a message to Ryuji, and it riles you up so bad you spend half the night shaking out of your skin, because _you don't want this,_ you don't want to get up close and personal again, because there's so little left of you to be up close and personal with and what's there is a mess and you're so desperately, grotesquely ashamed but you don't remember how to be anyone or anything else anymore.

Morgana goes out more and more often with Ryuji.

You meet him in front of the bar you work at and hand the bag over like you're making some sort of drug deal, and your days are emptier, even though you haven't walked around with him constantly by your side for a year or so now, and a longer stretch of time before that, before the incident that made him feel like he had to stick by you again.

He tries to tell you what he and Ryuji got up to one day. He gets as far as saying Ann's name and you turn over in your bed, pulling the worn blanket over your head.

You don't want to know what he's doing, how he's meeting up with everyone (because he has to be, he does) and you don't want to know if he's talking about you, because he probably is, and the thought makes your whole stomach drop like a stone.

You didn't want anyone to know.

You still don't.

All you want is to stay in this quiet emotionless space you've carved out for yourself, this shitty apartment with the dirty blinds and cracked windowpane, the tiny, loud fridge and the grease stains all over the stove and the scuffed, worn linoleum.

Your studio apartment looks how you feel and that's the way you want it.

You don't like it, but at this point it's what you deserve.

And then one day Futaba texts you a single message, a single _incoming,_ and you barely have time to blink and read it and brace for something you don't know and don't want when the phone lights up with a number that's just barely familiar.

You answer it just at the last ring, even with the panic like acid at the back of your throat, because Sojiro stopped calling you years ago after you stopped answering, after you'd asked Futaba to ask him because you just couldn't, but what if something's wrong, what if something's _happened—_

But it's the most innocuous conversation you’ve had in...a long time.

Sojiro doesn't sound mad, he doesn't ask you how you’ve been other than the barest of niceties, he doesn't ask anything of you until the very end, after he's said how leblanc is, how Futaba is, how he himself is.

He tells you to come see him, for coffee, for curry, to see his face. _Humor an old man,_ he says, and the panic demands that you spit out immediately _you're not that old, you probably look the same as you ever did, you're just gonna look like an old man forever—_

His laugh makes you feel things, the tiniest bubble of warmth where there's only been cold for the longest time.

It takes you awhile to work up the courage to go.

In fact, you consider not going at all, but Futaba keeps texting you weird memes, and you know that you wouldn't be able to run to a place she couldn't find you at.

It'd be easier to just give in, right?

You spend almost an hour in the shower. The hot water runs out after about twenty minutes, but that's fine. You dry yourself off cold and shivering with Morgana bitching to you about how you need to take better care of yourself, what if you get a cold, etc etc whatever.

Anxiety spurs you onward, buoys you through the subway, through the crush of anonymous people, to the achingly-familiar Shibuya square. Every step through Yongen makes you want to turn back, fills you with regrets, with hopeless longing.

You stand at the entrance of the alleyway, at the corner of the bathhouse, near the used goods store across from the cafe— all in an attempt to prolong the inevitable.

You stand in front of the door, and your hands shake where they grip the strap of Morgana's bag, your whole body shakes, you can't do this, you can't let them see you like this, you should just drop Morgana here and run—

but before you can do more than step back the door swings open, and Sojiro is there.

He's older. There's more gray in his hair and lines in his face, and he's got a toothpick in his mouth in lieu of a cigarette. his face goes surprised; you have no idea what sort of expression you're making, frozen so still that you're not even breathing, that you're not sure your heart even beats.

And then his mouth softens, and his brow lowers, and he stretches a hand out, claps you on the shoulder.

_Welcome home, son,_ he says quiet and gruff, his fingers gently tugging, pulling you inside. _Come in, sit down. I'll make you a plate._

You duck your head to hide the hot tears threatening to leak out, and you step into the warmth.

You can't remember the last time you had a meal like this.

Or, well, you can— it was the night before you left for Inaba, ten years ago.

Sojiro'd asked if you'd wanted to go out to a restaurant or something to celebrate, but all you'd wanted was the familiar walls of the cafe surrounding you, the familiar taste of the curry like a benediction. This meal— served to you with a cup of coffee and Sojiro's gaze warm and heavy on you— throws you back with the first bite.

If you weren't crying before, you are now. You do it silently, as still and quiet as possible, mechanically ferrying bite after bite of curry into your mouth, hungry enough that you don't want to linger, anxious enough that you want to finish it all before he kicks you back out again. You don't think he sees.

It throws off the taste of the curry, just enough to keep you grounded in this moment. Morgana has his own dish, tuna arranged appealingly on a plate, and he keeps looking at you even as he submits to a thorough ear-scratching from Sojiro. You shake your head just a bit, side-to-side and no more.

The sound of the door opening actually makes you flinch, makes you drop the spoon halfway to your mouth; all you get is a flash of orange hair in your peripheral vision before Futaba is there, right up in your face, bug-eyed behind her too-thick glasses, and she reaches out and you think you're going to do something horrid, yell or cry or maybe give in to the way your stomach is tying itself into knots—

But she stops, a handspan away, and her eyes go wide. _Oh_ , she says, like something's been revealed to her, and then again, _ohh. Oh, Akira_.

_Don't crowd,_ Sojiro says mildly from where he's wiping a glass clean at the far end of the bar, like it hasn't been almost ten years since you've been in this seat, like it's been ten days, ten hours, ten minutes. _Are you hungry too?_

_I could eat,_ she admits, taking up the seat after Morgana and kicking her heels restlessly. You mark on the fact that she's not wearing shoes, something that feels dissonant somehow. Why isn't she wearing shoes?

She looks at you again, expression opaque now. _You've got curry all over your cheek,_ she says after a long moment, gesturing. you reach up, and she motions to your other cheek. _Yeah, that side. Hungry much?_

_He's been eating like garbage for years,_ Morgana says from behind a mouthful of tuna. You glare, but you're sure it's not a very impressive sight between your red eyes and your blotchy cheeks. You've never been an attractive crier. even less so now.

You excuse yourself to the bathroom to splash some water on your face and blow your nose, leaning hard on the sink to stare into the mirror after. Even after everything, it's still you. Same too-long messy hair, same dull grey eyes, same pale skin. You press cold paper towels into your eyes until they're less red, drawing the remains of your tattered mask around you.

Before you can leave the bathroom, you get a text from Futaba— _you gonna drown in there or what?_

And then another, _wait no don't answer that. stay in there actually this might be easier for you_

_and you don't have to answer if you don't want to_

_but don't think i don't recognize what you're doing and where you are_

_because right now you're kinda in the same sort of spot that i was in_

_i'm fine,_ you send back, a feeble protest steamrollered by Futaba's immediate _you're not fine and you haven't been fine for a long time_

You didn't want this, aren’t prepared for this sort of emotional combat. Coming here was stressful enough, and now any good vibes that you've gotten from the curry have been replaced by the ashy taste of failure on your tongue. You shouldn't have come here. You won't again.

_you'd probably have a palace, you know,_ Futaba texts. _i can still sorta tell that stuff sometimes._

_and what are you going to do about it?_ you ask, abruptly incandescent. _it's not like you can steal my heart._

_would if i could,_ she texts after a long, long moment. _i've missed my brother._

You have to physically hold back a noise at that, press the heels of your palms into your eyes so you don't— but it's too late, you already are, and your breaths echo harsh and staccato at you from every wall.

You almost miss the next text. _sojiro's missed his son, too._

You don't want this, you _don't want this to happen_ here and now in this tiny bathroom instead of your shitty apartment where at least you know you're alone, but it is and you can't do anything but press your back to the door and slide down so that your head is between your knees, your hands wound tight enough in your hair to hurt, and try to breathe through the stopper in your throat, the blockage in your lungs and the heat that burns in streams from the corners of your eyes, salty against your lips. You're _not_ — you lost that years ago, you lost the right to call them family even as you yearned for them, missed them desperately, so much it _burned._

There's a noise and a jostle, just barely, on the other side of the door, like someone's come up to sit with their back against it. Your phone vibrates once, twice. you're too preoccupied to look at it, trying to keep yourself from sliding any further down that slippery spiral, but on the other side of the door you hear Futaba huff an irritated sigh.

You scrape up enough of yourself to look.

_you don't have to talk about it, mona's told us enough as is. it's okay to not be okay, Akira. now that you're back here to stay you couldn't get away from us if you tried, so i hope you're ready for that._

You breathe, once, twice, sharp things that don't give back anywhere near as much oxygen as you'd prefer. _and what if i don't want that?_

Futaba snorts loud enough for you to hear it through the door. _if you didn't want that_ _you wouldn't have come home. to tokyo, to here._

it takes almost an hour for you to feel human enough to open the door again. Futaba stays with you the entire time.

You don't talk about what just happened, but Futaba presses her knuckles into your shoulder, and Sojiro serves you up another plate of curry with a stack of napkins beside it, and you go home with tupperwares full of fresh rice and leftovers, enough to tide you over for a week, and Sojiro's _come back soon, alright? I could use some help around the place. I'm not as spry as i used to be, after all_ echoing in your ears.

  


Your days become fuller, your nights less empty. Your life gets harder, because you have obligations now, obligations to at least appear put-together,

You know Futaba's watching you, know she's somehow managed to get a tracker onto your phone, if only for the too-convenient invitations to Leblanc every time you get near a subway station. You can't say no too many times in a row, because she pulls the 'Sojiro's gonna get worried' card, taps into that endless wellspring of guilt you don't think will ever run dry.

Part of you hates it, as much as you can hate anything. Part of you is endlessly, achingly, desperately relieved not to be alone again. That part of you gets louder and louder as the days go on, as you cave to someone else's orders with something that feels like gratitude.

You know you can't trust yourself. You've known that as long as you've known anything about yourself. To be ordered to Leblanc on a regular schedule, forced to keep to some sort of grooming and sleeping standard so you don't have to make explanations when you show up— it's soothing in a way that goes down to your bones.

That doesn't mean that it's _easy._

You snap at Futaba when she pushes you too far after a long sleepless night and she snaps right back, and it escalates into something huge and ugly, something that hangs brewing over you until you all but ricochet out of the cafe and into the streets, blind with frustration, blind with fear, knowing that this is the time you've messed it up for good, that this is the time you won't be allowed to come back, that they've just been having you on sufferance all this time and you've wrecked it again.

You miss two days of work as you tear yourself to shreds in your shitty studio apartment, so so grateful that you'd left before Morgana could tail you, and some little bit of you thinks _this might be it, this might be_ ** _it,_** and you’re relieved.

You're sure you locked the door but somehow it swings open anyway before you can even form a concrete plan, Morgana and Futaba storming your apartment, and the resultant screaming blowout leaves your head aching, your throat parched, every bit of you begging for solitude that they refuse to give you.

_I don't need a fucking suicide watch!_ you snap from behind the closed bathroom door, garbled and barely distinct, and Futaba snaps something back that you can barely parse. _Just leave, just go—_

_Like hell, Kurusu!_ She yells, and the door judders like she— like she’s _kicked_ it, and the thought and the action are so hard to reconcile that you actually pause. _If you actually think I’d leave you like this—_

_Everyone else did!_ It’s nasty, but so are you, a nasty blight on the world that you’re trying your best to exorcise if she would just _let_ you. _It’s not like you bothered before—_ another low blow, the only ones you’re capable of making when the bile in your brain and your heart overwhelms your mouth in an unstoppable froth.

Futaba kicks the door again. _I’m here now,_ she says, tight and forcefully even, _just like you were there for me once, and I’m not leaving this time. Your apartment is a shithole, you know, I can’t believe you’re going to make me sit out here while you finish your temper tantrum— you don’t even have_ **_wi-fi,_ ** _you savage—_ a long and mindless tirade that doesn’t mean anything more than _I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. Come out, I’m here._

The storm settles, as it always does. You live to face another evening, the lassitude settling like an unwelcome but well-worn blanket over you. You come out to a spread of takeout and Futaba clumsily washing the few dishes in your sink, with Morgana’s help on where they go when they dry. When you go to take a fork from her she shoves it so hard into your ribs that you jolt, mumbling a feeble protest. _Sit down and eat,_ she says, thin and brittle. _Before I make you._

It all tastes like ash in your mouth. Everything does. But you eat enough for her to be satisfied, and watch her put the takeout containers in the fridge, and when she’s gone Morgana steps into the space between your shoulder blades and the back of the couch and curls into a tight little ball without a word.

You must have scared him, too. He must have thought— well, he wasn’t wrong, they were just too early. It’s a good reminder, though. You have a responsibility to him, if no one else.

You’ll try to be better.

(You say this every time. Nothing’s changed yet.)

  


Sojiro starts asking for help in the cafe a few days a week, says he sprained his back trying to carry too many heavy bags of beans up the stairs. It's a blatant lie but you don't have any room to argue.

You avoid the conversation as long as you possibly fucking can, but you're slowly figuring out that there's some things you can't run from forever, no matter how hard you try.

Between the nights you spend at your bar job and the days you can't say no to in the familiar warmth of the cafe, you're drawn thin and taut, fragile as melted candle wax spun out into long, thin threads. You sleep when you can, take what you can get— a full meal a day, at least, one that Sojiro all but stands over you and watches you eat, and all the leftovers you can possibly carry— but it's wearying.

Sojiro looks at you like he knows. you duck your head and avoid your gaze, but it's coming like a bullet train and you're glued to the tracks.

When it hits, you're washing dishes. Morgana sits at the other side of the counter mauling the last of his tuna, and Sojiro leans against the bar with a crossword puzzle. You're exhausted, and the coffee mugs keep slipping from your tired fingers into the soapy water, splashing suds up to hit your glasses.

After the third time, the third splash, the third accidental tired exhale, you hear the book of crosswords hit the counter, and you flinch. The headlights round the corner. You're fixated, frozen.

_You look tired,_ Sojiro says, the first opening barb in a verbal fencing match you have no energy for.

_Long week,_ you say back, unwilling to look up _. Long days, long nights._

He grunts, that familiar displeased sound. _Long trip across the city to come over here too, huh?_

You shrug. It's what you deserve, isn't it?

There's footsteps behind you. He's closing in. You brace for the inevitable, inhale deep like if you could just block out everything he's saying it won't happen—

_Futaba may have filled the attic here with computers, but we still have a free room in the house,_ Sojiro says, like he has any idea what he's doing. _it's been waiting for you for a while._

It's like a physical blow.

You're rocked forward, arms slipping where they're braced against the lip of the sink, and suddenly you're soaked to the elbows in warm, soapy water, the backwash flowing up and onto your apron, too. Doesn't matter, you barely feel it, can barely feel anything over the hummingbird-thrum of your pulse in your chest, your ears. You can't, you can't, you _can't you CAN'T_ , you _can't_ bring yourself into their house, you _can't_ let the awful thing you've become invade their home, why doesn't he _understand?_

_No,_ you say weakly, the barest echo of everything you want to say. _Thanks, but—_

_Why?_ His voice is blunt, a brick instead of a knife, knocking you sideways.

_why?? My— my job is on the other side of town and I—_

_Quit it._

_Qui— I, Sojiro, I have to make money somehow, my apartment—_

_You'll work here._ Each sentence is a stone that bruises and tears, chokes you, makes you bleed. You can't.

_That doesn't— doesn't solve anything if I'm still all the way across the city—_

_Just around the block,_ he says. You can't look. You can't turn around. You're frozen solid, you're ice, you're stone, you're _panicking._

_M— my lease—_

_Break it._

_I can't, just do that—_

_Why?_

_I— the—_ you scrape for answers, for excuses, for any rope you won't hang yourself by, any rope you can grab on that's just long enough to let you keep drowning _. The, I can't afford the fees to break it early—_

**_FUCK_ **that was the WRONG thing to say, the WRONGEST, because now you're bleeding in open water and Sojiro's going for the kill.

_I'll pay it._

It sounds like failure. It sounds like failure, and dying, and every single shameful moment of the last ten years packaged up all neat and tidy for you to choke on, and it sounds like love, free and unconditional and choking you.

_No._ it's all you can say, all you can do.

_Humor an old man._

_No._

_I've got more money than I'll ever need. I didn't just run this cafe my whole life, you know._

_No._

_Akira—_

_Sojiro,_ you say, and your hands are gripping onto the ledge of the sink so hard your knuckles stand out stark and white through your skin, _I can't, please stop asking._

You want to die. You'd rather expire right here and right now because this— you _can't_. You can't just, go into his home and play happy family like that, invade his generosity and set up shop in his house like some sort of parasite, he doesn't get it, you ruin everything you touch, you've been ruining everything for the past ten years and there's no way you're gonna stop now—

_What about Morgana?_ Sojiro says, and your blood turns to ice. _He's not happy there. Futaba told me. Are you—_

_He can stay here, then._ You barely recognize your own voice.

Sojiro takes another step forward. Morgana says _wait, what?_ confused from the bar.

But that's fine. That's for the best, isn't it? _Take him,_ you say again, the unnatural calm in your voice belied only by the way your hands shake, hard enough to make your arms shake, hard enough to make you shake. _He deserves it, it's better for him here._

_Do you even_ **_hear_ ** _yourself right now?!_ Morgana yells. You can't look. You can't turn. All you can do is stare into the soapy water in the basin below.

_It's true!_ You didn't realize your voice would be that loud. It rings off every surface of the kitchen. _Fucking, take him! Take him so I can finally be fucking alone again, live my goddamn life the way I've always wanted to, finally have some peace and quiet—_ and you don't mean it, you don't mean a single word of it, but now that the words are pouring out vitriolic and full of hate they won't stop. _And that way when I finally manage to disappear none of you will be able to find me again and I can—_

_Can what,_ Sojiro says from right beside you, and he doesn't sound angry, and he doesn't sound judgemental, and he doesn't sound like he's about to turn you around and kick you out of the cafe like you deserve.

_Can,_ you say, and almost choke on the words, _can rest, can die, can just, I'm, so, I'm so, Sojiro I'm so fucking_ **_tired—_ **

His hand alights on your shoulder and you shatter.

You're a whirlwind, a hurricane, you're eighty thousand disparate pieces and they all scream, and they all weep, and they’re all so, so fucking tired, and every last one of them wants to stop but doesn't know how, you've been going for so long and you don't know, you don't know how to ask for help anymore. you've been drowning for years and at some point you just gave up trying to struggle back to the surface, giving in to the urge to float listlessly, battered by the tides.

You've been weightless for so long you don't know how to deal with washing up on the shore anymore. You don't know how to parse having someone come along and scoop you up.

But Sojiro's arms are strong and warm around you, and somehow your fingers have dug their way into the back of his sweater hard enough that you can feel the weave indenting itself onto your skin.

When you weave yourself back together one aching, brittle piece at a time, you're exhausted, and you ache, and you sway on your feet when Sojiro pulls you back to look at you. You can't meet his eyes, and not just because you're trying to scrub away the tears and the snot. You don't— you don't know how to deal with this. You don't know what to do, what to say. You haven't had— well.

You haven't had someone hold you like that since long before you were grown.

You can't, even when you want to, even when you yearn for it so much it makes you want to start crying again, forces two more fat hot tears up and over your cheeks for you to uselessly scrub at.

_You can,_ Sojiro says, little more than a low rumble. His hands are still warm on your shoulders, keeping you from fragmenting, from flying apart again. _You came this far, son. It's okay to come all the way home, now._

And that's it, you're crying again, helpless and wounded and covering your face in your sleeves like it'd make any difference at all, because it's too much, this offer is _too much_ , but without it you think you know you'll lose yourself completely, you think you've known it for a while now, and it's only with someone else's fist in your collar do you fully recognize the edge of the drop you've been teetering over for such a long, long time.

Recognizing the fullness, the breadth, is suddenly terrifying. Seeing the gulf, the aching maw, the pebble kicked into the waiting jaws only to fall endlessly, never touching the ground...

You were so close. Closer than you've ever been. You still are.

_Come home,_ Sojiro says again, and gives you a little shake. _We've got your room set up for you._

You…

fold.

You concede.

_Okay,_ you say, so very, very quietly, as if, if you barely say it at all, it doesn't count, and it won't be taken.

His hand doesn't leave your shoulder as he guides you outside, as he flips the sign on the door to closed, as he walks you around the block and to the door and up the stairs, as you shuffle along almost blindly.

It's familiar, achingly so; Futaba's door has the same plate on it, even if it is cracked open. She's not there right now, which you think you appreciate in a vague and distant sort of way, but it doesn't matter because you continue on, up another set of stairs, pushing up a trapdoor and—

It's not the attic above the cafe, but it feels like it all the same.

The mattress tucked into the corner sits on an actual frame, not just a bunch of milk cartons. There's no dust, no grime, no coffeebags or old stored supplies, only afternoon sunlight coming through the cracked window, turning everything a warm, hazy gold.

The stars are still speckled all across the ceiling.

It's unfamiliar but nostalgic in the best of ways, and you haven't really stopped crying this whole time but there's no way you can even pretend you still aren't anymore. Everything in you screams that you shouldn't, that you'll sully this perfect room with, just, everything you are, but for once— 

for goddamn _once_ in your goddamn _life—_

you're too fucking tired to listen.

Sojiro nudges you towards the bed. You take a stumbling step, then two, but Morgana beats you there. _Oh,_ he says, _this is new!_

_Oh,_ you say, barely a croak, and sit. It sinks deliciously under you, nothing like the four-inch mattress pad on the pull-out couch in your studio across the city. There's no springs digging into you, no uncomfortable lumps or dips.

Sojiro presses a bottle of water into your hand, cold with condensation. You drink it mechanically, wipe your face with the wet cloth he hands you and give it back when he holds his hand out for it. _Dinner'll be ready in a few hours,_ he says. Somehow you've gone horizontal, or he has; he looms above you as he plucks the glasses off your face and sets them on the nightstand. You've never really needed them; the room doesn't fade away into blurs, but the tears still caught in your lashes shine a little brighter in the afternoon light.

_The store,_ you croak as he turns.

He just shakes his head, his hand on your shoulder, firm and reassuring. _We're closed._

Morgana steps delicately behind you to curl up against the nape of your neck and the dip of your shoulder blades. He doesn't say anything, but he purrs, and he purrs, and he purrs, and you're asleep before Sojiro crosses the threshold.

**Author's Note:**

> akira got someone to guide him home in the end. i'm still waiting for mine. 
> 
> thanks for reading. even if i'm shit at answering comments, i do read and cherish and appreciate them all more than you could ever know. it's scary, flinging fic untethered like this into the world, especially one as raw and personal as this one.


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